My Wix Journey - Day 16 @ 9:26pm EDT

Despite the lack of blog posts, I've really been immersed in WiX.  I'm learning to love and hate this project.  I really love the XML declarative style of creating MSIs.  I really hate the fact that WiX wraps the abomination known as Windows installer. 

I was very familiar with Windows Installer before this adventure. I've spent years working with both InstallShield and Wise, and have had to edit raw MSI tables many times in the past.  However, these commercial products do a much better job of hiding the complexities of Windows Installer than WiX does.  If you decide to adopt WiX, make certain that you have the time to invest in learning the ins and outs of the MSI SDK.  Even if you think that you know quite a bit in this area, be prepared to spend some time spelunking through MSI.chm.

Writing Custom Actions using WiX isn't a walk in the park, either.  I'll talk a bit about managed CAs a bit in the future.  Hopefully people will learn from my trials and tribulations in this area.

Just to make sure that this blog entry has some substance, I'm going to give my WiX UI tip of the day:

To define the default font, place the following in the <UI/> section:

<UI>
  <Property Id="DefaultUIFont">Tahoma8</Property>
  <TextStyle Id="Tahoma8" FaceName="Tahoma" Size="8" />  
  <!-- rest of UI (dialogs, etc) go here. -->
<UI>

 

3 Comments

  • Jerry, this has been a great read. Being able to see where people have problems as they start working with the WiX toolset is very helpful to me. I don't suppose you have a list of the issues that were particularly difficult to figure out? If we know what those are then maybe the WiX toolset can help point you in the right direction.



    As for managed code CustomActions... well, that deserves two or three blog entries from me. There are many facets to that problem.

  • Rob -

    I'll post the issues to the WiX-Users mailing list at the end of my project.



    This is one of the reasons that I do like this project. From monitoring the mailing lists it is very apparent that the dev team is very interested in improving this project.



    Honestly, most of my complaints are related directly to Windows Installer. WiX does have a few areas that are difficult to work with, but it's not too bad.

  • I look forward to seeing your suggestions for improvement. We have many fronts where we make things better.

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